"I do not believe
in my mind that the way things are in Nigeria, any Catholic priest has the
mandate to decide which of the political contestants should be voted for…I
don’t believe a priest should be doing that…If he was in my archdiocese, I will
have sanctioned him long ago for the kind of utterances he makes." – John
Cardinal Onaiyekan, Catholic Bishop of Abuja Metropolitan See on Fr. Ejike
Mbaka (2015)
Prophecies and predictions by Christian pastors often mark
the end of a year and the beginning of another in Nigeria…egged on by the
media, looking for juicy material for their overtly religious and superstitious
readers, these pastors sometimes overreach themselves as they dish out
prophecies as if they were some kind of annual merchandise. This year has not
been different with interesting prophecies offered by Apostle Johnson Suleman,
Pastor Enoch Adeboye, Pastor Tunde Bakare, Catholic priest Rev. Fr. Camillus Ejike
Mbaka and a host of others. What I find curious every year, is that each
Pastor ends up saying something different from the other, whereas what we know
is that there is only ONE GOD – absolute and indivisible. The teleological
concept of God is monotheistic, but today’s Pastors in their prophecies convey
a pantheistic concept of God: a God that speaks in many voices and forms,
creating a dissonance which is then exploited by the media, as the year
unfolds, measuring the prophecies against actual developments, to determine who
among the many prophets is the true seer. This seeming retailing of
prophecies in the public sphere should be a source of concern to the Church.
Of all the prophecies that I have read about this year, I
find two particularly interesting. The first is the New Year Day
declaration by Pastor Tunde Bakare before his congregation at the Latter Rain
Church that God had just spoken to him not to leave politics, because he still
has an assignment for him in the political arena. “God told me to run for
President”, he announced. When - he does not know but he tells the congregation
to pray along with him. “When He tells me the time, you will hear about
it.” It will be recalled that Pastor Tunde Bakare was the running mate to
President Muhammadu Buhari on the platform of the Congress for Progressive
Change (CPC) during the 2011 Presidential election. His decision at the time to
go into politics was quite controversial particularly amongst his Christian
brethren who argued that a man of the cloth should not swim in the dirty and
dirtied waters of Nigerian politics. The CPC lost the Presidential
election and Pastor Bakare returned to the pulpit.
He won’t be the first Pastor to declare interest in the
highest office in the land. Pastor Chris Okotie of the Household of God Church
first ran for President in 2003 as a candidate of the Justice Party. Then he
ran again in 2007 and again in 2011 on the platform of the FRESH Democratic
Party. He lost on all occasions. Yet each time Pastor Chris Okotie declared
interest in the Presidential office, he always said he had heard from God.
Listening to his campaigns, he always sounded so sure that he had indeed been
anointed by God to be President. In 2015, God apparently did not speak to
Pastor Okotie because he did not bother to join the race.
Do Pastors Okotie and Bakare, both learned men, hear the
voice of the same God? Is it possible for God to anoint two of his servants as
Nigerian President at the same time? For, indeed, when Pastor Bakare’s critics
opposed his decision to go into politics, his stoutest defence in 2011 was that
he had heard the voice of God, and that the voice of God is superior to that of
man. He quoted the Scriptures: Psalm 78: 70, 71; Romans 13:1. We, lesser
mortals, may probably not fully understand the ways of God and the prophetic
Ministry but the clergy must resist the temptation, unwitting temptation may
be, to project God in negative light. The doctrine is that the omniscient God,
the I-am-that-I-am that we know never plays politics with His words. He does
not contradict Himself. He keeps His promises.
The second prophecy of interest is from Rev. Fr. Camillus
Ejike Mbaka of the Adoration Ministry, an evangelical arm of the Catholic
Church based in Enugu. In recent years, Fr. Mbaka seems to have turned himself
into a spiritual authority on Presidential politics in Nigeria. A prophet since
his primary school days, by his own declaration, Mbaka now tells Nigerians who
should be President. In 2015, he had predicted that President Muhammadu Buhari
will be President. He was very critical of the Jonathan Presidency. When then
First Lady, Mrs Patience Jonathan visited the Adoration Ministry in Enugu,
Mbaka reportedly rejected her offertory and gift – an indication that he would
not associate with someone that God had not chosen for another term in office.
As he put it: “There is no one kobo of Jonathan or Mrs Jonathan in my hand. The
Holy Spirit rejected all of them. When the saga was going on, I put my hands on
the altar, swore an oath that if I ever touched Jonathan’s one kobo, may he win
the election and that if I never and I am being accused of it, he will fail the
election…”
President Jonathan lost the election and Mbaka was
triumphant. He gained more credibility among his followers and the APC and the
Buhari Presidency took him as a friend and their beloved priest. He received
special praise from President Buhari. He would later be invited to the
Presidential Villa for an audience with the President who commended him for his
“steadfastness.” When the private jet that took Mbaka to Abuja touched down at
the airport, and Mbaka showed his face and waved to the crowd, you would think
it was the Pope himself visiting the capital city.
Mbaka’s career as a celebrity priest assumed a new flavor at
that point. After his visit to the Presidential Villa, he continued to sell the
Buhari Presidency, and on occasions even did a better job than government
spokespersons. Buhari could do no wrong in his eyes. He accused the Jonathans,
whom he had earlier accused of plotting to kill him, of creating all the
problems that the Buhari administration was confronted with. In the heat
of the pro-Biafra agitation by Nnamdi Kanu and Indigenous Peoples Organisation
of Biafra (IPOB), Mbaka dismissed the agitation as “evil.”
On New Year Day 2018, this romance between priest and
president ended. Fr. Mbaka who had anointed Buhari as President in 2015,
withdrew the anointing. He told President Buhari not to consider seeking a
second term in office. He addressed President Buhari thus: “As I was waiting on
the Lord, I’m asked to advise you, don’t come out for second tenure; after
this, retire peacefully. Come back to yourself or you will cry by the
time you will be sent out of office. Those who are encouraging you to come out
and run again want to disgrace you shamefully and publicly.” The Holy Books are
full of similar stories of the prophets delivering God’s messages to
rulers. When God withdraws the anointing of a particular king or
commander, or issues a stern warning, it is usually as a result of an offence
that has been committed.
Fr. Mbaka soon provided a justification for his prophetic
message when he accused President Buhari of (1) failing to listen to his wife –
“an adviser, a wonderful mentor, a visionist, a matriarch”, (2) allowing
himself to be hypnotized by the wrong people who surround him, (3) failing to
deliver on his promise of change, and “toying with the privilege” God has given
him; and (4) running an anti-corruption campaign that is “…archaic and
barbaric, a witch-hunt, terribly selective”. Fr Mbaka did not pull his punches.
He says: “…Heaven demands Buhari, our President to change all those who are
holding and caging him in captivity. If he will not change them, he will be
changed… Change or you will be changed…God said that Buhari is in trouble.
Buhari is in a horrible bondage. Nigerians are dying in your hands…Your change
mantra is questionable. You are to change your change or you will be disgraced
out of office.”
In these words, Fr. Mbaka sounds like he was delivering
God’s own assessment of the Buhari government. Although he advises the
President to “wake up” and “sit up”, the thrust of his message is that the
President should embrace the Mandela option and not seek another term in
office. Fr Mbaka reportedly further disclosed that the anointing for the office
of President has been passed to Governor Ibrahim Dankwambo of the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP). Fr. Mbaka’s messages, coming at a time when politicians
are beginning to position themselves for another round of elections is bound to
ruffle feathers. President Buhari’s supporters have since rejected his
condemnation of their administration. His choice of Dankwambo as future
President has also similarly been rejected, with innuendoes, in a scathing
piece by Muhammad Jibrin Barde that there “may be more than a handshake from
his darling Governor Dankwambo.”
Prophets in the Bible were not always liked for their
messages but should Fr. Mbaka run into troubled waters with his mouth, he may
not enjoy the support of his bosses in the Catholic Church who have for too
long warned him to stop using the name of God and the Church to select
political candidates for the Nigerian electorate.
He reminds me of Samuel in the Bible. Samuel was judge,
priest and prophet. Mbaka also sees himself as a judge, priest and prophet.
Samuel anointed Saul to be king over a united Israel, at a time when the
Israelites wanted change (I Samuel: 9-10) They were tired of the rule of judges
and prophets, and wanted a king like their neighbours. Saul, having been
chosen, following a message from God, became the first King over Israel.
He was a strong military commander who won many battles for his country. But he
was also jealous, rigid, insecure, dictatorial and covetous.
When David who had been his armour bearer, and who nursed
him back to good health with music, later defeated Goliath at the battle of the
valley of Elah and the people sang in David’s praise: “Saul hath slain his
thousands, and David his ten thousands” (I Samuel 18:8), Saul became insecure
and wanted him put to death. It didn’t matter that David was his son-in-law,
and the best friend of Jonathan, Saul’s son, who was of a much kinder and
affable nature. King Saul’s anointing was withdrawn when he transgressed in the
eyes of the Lord and the Lord departed from him. (I Samuel15: 9 – 29; I Samuel
28: 16 -18). The same Prophet Samuel who anointed Saul also anointed David, the
son of Jesse as next king (I Samuel 16: 1-13). Saul was told that his
anointing had been withdrawn and he would come to a bitter end. This prophecy was
fulfilled: at the battle of Mount Gilboa, the Philistines defeated the
Israelites, three of Saul’s sons were killed, and he himself fell on his
sword.
Bible commentators have criticized Samuel’s reign as judge,
priest and prophet in terms of its mixture of politics and spirituality. Fr.
Mbaka is similarly guilty, even if his role as judge is utterly presumptuous.
By naming Dankwambo of the PDP as next President, he may also have invited unto
him, the same kind of persecution that David faced. What is different and
instructive in this instance, however, is that with Fr. Mbaka and other
contemporary prophets in Nigeria, it is most difficult to know where the
spiritual becomes political and where politics feeds into spirituality.
Nigerians knowing this to be true continue to listen all the same to their
prophets and pastors because many of our compatriots believe in the idea of God
and His dominion over all things. What we do not know and may never be able to
establish is how to make that necessary distinction between when a Prophet
actually hears the voice of God, God as in God, or when a prophet hears voices
as in psychiatry. What is certain is: as prophets, it is possible to hear the
Voice of God, but as human beings, it is possible for the same Prophets “to hear
voices.”
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